Playtest 233: Account Progression, Floating Damage Text, and Balance!
NOTE: DON'T FORGET TO UNLOCK SOME UNITS IN THE COLLECTION TAB!
Account Progression
Units are no longer available to all players by default and must be unlocked.
Units can be purchased in the COLLECTION tab of the out-of-game client for currency gained from playing the game.
1000 Bonus currency is awarded when a player's account levels up!
Some units are on a Free Rotation. The Free Rotation includes:
One hero from each faction, and their basic unit
Two units associated with each hero
Patchbots
Sentinels
Players that volunteered to have their level and currency reset have been reset. You know who you are.
Deck Building
Added a safeguard for the frequent, accidental behavior where a player would try to select a card and instead confirm/ready. When selecting a card, the "Ready" button will now be replaced by an instruction to make your choice!
Added a "Cancel" button that restores your previous card selection.
Gameplay
Titans
Titan movement is now more predictable
Fixed a bug that prevented Titan health from scaling correctly
Fixed a bug that prevented Heroes trying to claim Titans from correctly being stunned.
Critter Regions
Critters now drop Gems for the team that secured the killing blow.
Spawn rate: 20 seconds ⇒ 30 seconds
Critters no longer cast their area stun if the shield is not broken in time.
Critter Health: 900 ⇒ 1100
Critter shield: 60 ⇒ 50
Critter damage taken from Shield Pop: 300 ⇒ 400
Creeps
Creeps now drop Gems for the team that secured the killing blow.
Caterpillar (Easy Camp minion; Medium Camp minion)
Size reduced by ~20%
Mantis Flower (Medium Camp captain)
Gems dropped: 8 ⇒ 6
Flying Fly-Trap (Flying hard-camp minion)
Gems dropped: 8 ⇒ 4
Pitcher Plant (Hard-camp Captain)
Gems dropped: 16 ⇒ 12
User Interface
Added Floating Damage Text!
Damage numbers are on by default. They can be disabled in the Interface tab in the Settings menu
Damage numbers will aggregate to the total value if instances of damage happen at very close points in time (~0.2 seconds)
Units
Blue
Hydros
Damage: 18 ⇒ 19
Attack cooldown: 1.3 seconds ⇒ 1.2 seconds
Scuttleguard
Energy cost: 4 ⇒ 6
Health: 250 ⇒ 380
Damage: 14 ⇒ 19
Attack cooldown: 1.5 seconds ⇒ 1.3 seconds
Unit cap: 20 ⇒ 15
Retracting Roll
Damage: 5 ⇒ 8
Movement slow: 60% ⇒ 70%
Movement slow duration: 3 seconds ⇒ 4 seconds
Calcified Shell (Upgrade)
Bonus health: 15 ⇒ 25
Bonus health per hero level: 3 ⇒ 4
Dredgecrawler
Fixed a major bug that prevented Dredgecrawler attacks from self-destructing on impact.
Green
Grath
Stone Form now properly silences the target.
Terrapin Trooper
Size reduced by ~8%
Howling Commando
Attack range: 5.0 ⇒ 5.25
Attack Splash radius: 1.25 ⇒ 1.5
Toxin Mystic
Deadly Toxin no longer affects Juggernauts.
Red
Vex
Scorch
Ignite is now categorized as a FIRE effect
Spitfire
Backdraft now deals bonus damage to any target with a FIRE effect.
Does not stack with multiple FIRE effects
Emberfiend
Attack cooldown: 1.4 seconds ⇒ 1.8 seconds
Attacks apply **Ignite ⇒ Burn, which is a FIRE effect
Burn deals 4 damage per second for 5 seconds
Fireball ⇒ Heat Wave
Damage per Second: 50 ⇒ 80
Pyrosaur
Flamethrower
Damage per Second: 70 ⇒ 75
No longer applies Ignite
White
Conduit
Attack range: 11 ⇒ 10
Attack leash range: 13 ⇒ 12
Attack damage type: Normal ⇒ Projectile
Movement speed: 5.3 ⇒ 5.1
Drill Laser
Damage per Second: 100 ⇒ 120
Damage type: Normal ⇒ Projectile
Cooldown: 30 seconds ⇒ 40 seconds
Precognitor
Unit cap: 3 ⇒ 2
Hamaliel's Blessing
Cooldown: 10 seconds ⇒ 18 seconds
Duration: 6 seconds ⇒ 4 seconds
No longer castable on Titans (had no effect anyway)
Mercenaries
Juggernaut
Health: 3500 ⇒ 6000
Siege Engineer
Deploy
Now targets a spot to deploy, rather than activating at its current location
Now displays a range indicator when targeting Deploy (also shows in the minimap).
A deployed Siege Engineer, and its range, are now visible to enemies.
Unit Production Training (1.1) - Just thought I'd go through the tutorial to check a couple things, go for the full reset feel. Couple notes, there was a phase before the teammate spawn that I was able to turn off auto-production and had full access to the unit cards, so built lava splitters and such. Also, it looked like the unit cards weren't displaying the production hotkeys. Player expectation was to get some currency from completing the tutorial.
Progression
Currency (2.1) - I was surprised to find that in a game that bug splatted, I had still accumulated some currency. I didn't remember a mention of how the currency is earned in the patch notes, so this makes me curious whether it was gained from starting a game, time in game, or some other metric. It felt like the currency for that game was low, but I'd assume that the order of accumulation rate would increase in order from incomplete game > loss > win. If that is the case, that feels right.
Collection Screen (2.2) - For new players, it could be nice to indicate why certain units are expensive, for example, drawing a line that or something that indicates that the Sandstinger unlocks when you unlock Eris.
(2.3) - With the current set, it already feels like a deep amount of progression potential. An idea occurred to me while I was looking through the units in the collection, deciding what to unlock. Many games with similar unlock progressions preview the [unit] in action. An alternative to this could be a more diagrammed representation of where the unit would function in a nominal engagement. Mocked it up (here as a mouseover on portrait). Instead of shape abstractions, definitely think it would be cooler to see the units, though with some indication of attack vectors. I like this idea because it pre-loads the concept of the strategy in the engagement, even if you're 1-A'ing.
Gameplay
(3.1) - Normally, damage text wouldn't be a big QoL request for me, but playing with it today, it definitely is nice to have, especially for those times when you're either going "wait, I feel like this should be doing more damage" or when you've just completed an upgrade. It's a nice source of feedback.
On the new wild caterpillars, they feel much better now that they don't stun. I wish that regular caterpillars and pitcher plants were the same way.
The new mechanics for wild caterpillars make a lot more sense than the old ones, although i think they can still be improved. Although any hero can now consistently solo 1 per 5 seconds (For 6 over the 30 seconds they're up), it's extraordinarily apm intensive and skill based to do so, particularly on heroes like Ryme who are very dependent on proccing the shield for this 1 kill per 5 seconds.
I would also like titans to not be auto targetted like the caterpillars if possible. However, i'm not sure if this'd be easy to implement.
Precogs feel a lot more balanced, although I would have probably preferred a substantial cost increase (To apoc levels) as a nerf instead of keeping it at its low cost and reducing unit cap as more and more high tier units in the Order of Hamaliel (Cool name by the way) seem to be getting lowered in unit cap and in power Precog, Wind Ray, Purifier all got unit cap reduced, and no one ever uses 6 zephyrs anyways, so a lot of power is starting to need to come from tier 1 + support. As white, I leftover shards are not uncommon.
@CohLysion said: (2.3) - With the current set, it already feels like a deep amount of progression potential. An idea occurred to me while I was looking through the units in the collection, deciding what to unlock. Many games with similar unlock progressions preview the [unit] in action. An alternative to this could be a more diagrammed representation of where the unit would function in a nominal engagement. Mocked it up (here as a mouseover on portrait). Instead of shape abstractions, definitely think it would be cooler to see the units, though with some indication of attack vectors. I like this idea because it pre-loads the concept of the strategy in the engagement, even if you're 1-A'ing.
Definitely a feature we want to add to the Collection/Shop when we have time. Our original mockups for it actually have something like what you're talking about (that is, a short gameplay clip of the unit). No ETA/timeline for it unfortunately.
Treisk
Member, Administrator
Comments
Tutorial
Unit Production Training
(1.1) - Just thought I'd go through the tutorial to check a couple things, go for the full reset feel. Couple notes, there was a phase before the teammate spawn that I was able to turn off auto-production and had full access to the unit cards, so built lava splitters and such. Also, it looked like the unit cards weren't displaying the production hotkeys. Player expectation was to get some currency from completing the tutorial.
Progression
Currency
(2.1) - I was surprised to find that in a game that bug splatted, I had still accumulated some currency. I didn't remember a mention of how the currency is earned in the patch notes, so this makes me curious whether it was gained from starting a game, time in game, or some other metric. It felt like the currency for that game was low, but I'd assume that the order of accumulation rate would increase in order from incomplete game > loss > win. If that is the case, that feels right.
Collection Screen
(2.2) - For new players, it could be nice to indicate why certain units are expensive, for example, drawing a line that or something that indicates that the Sandstinger unlocks when you unlock Eris.
(2.3) - With the current set, it already feels like a deep amount of progression potential. An idea occurred to me while I was looking through the units in the collection, deciding what to unlock. Many games with similar unlock progressions preview the [unit] in action. An alternative to this could be a more diagrammed representation of where the unit would function in a nominal engagement. Mocked it up (here as a mouseover on portrait). Instead of shape abstractions, definitely think it would be cooler to see the units, though with some indication of attack vectors. I like this idea because it pre-loads the concept of the strategy in the engagement, even if you're 1-A'ing.
Gameplay
(3.1) - Normally, damage text wouldn't be a big QoL request for me, but playing with it today, it definitely is nice to have, especially for those times when you're either going "wait, I feel like this should be doing more damage" or when you've just completed an upgrade. It's a nice source of feedback.
On the new wild caterpillars, they feel much better now that they don't stun. I wish that regular caterpillars and pitcher plants were the same way.
The new mechanics for wild caterpillars make a lot more sense than the old ones, although i think they can still be improved. Although any hero can now consistently solo 1 per 5 seconds (For 6 over the 30 seconds they're up), it's extraordinarily apm intensive and skill based to do so, particularly on heroes like Ryme who are very dependent on proccing the shield for this 1 kill per 5 seconds.
I would also like titans to not be auto targetted like the caterpillars if possible. However, i'm not sure if this'd be easy to implement.
Precogs feel a lot more balanced, although I would have probably preferred a substantial cost increase (To apoc levels) as a nerf instead of keeping it at its low cost and reducing unit cap as more and more high tier units in the Order of Hamaliel (Cool name by the way) seem to be getting lowered in unit cap and in power Precog, Wind Ray, Purifier all got unit cap reduced, and no one ever uses 6 zephyrs anyways, so a lot of power is starting to need to come from tier 1 + support. As white, I leftover shards are not uncommon.
Definitely a feature we want to add to the Collection/Shop when we have time. Our original mockups for it actually have something like what you're talking about (that is, a short gameplay clip of the unit). No ETA/timeline for it unfortunately.